


What others think.

by Andrayuss



Category: Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: BotiqueShipping, F/M, Lacewoodshipping, lacewood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25891795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andrayuss/pseuds/Andrayuss
Summary: She didn’t know the proper way to bring it up, so she was just going to ask him.
Relationships: Calme | Calem & Platane-hakase | Professor Augustine Sycamore & Serena
Kudos: 3





	What others think.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off this request from my tumblr: "Can you PLEASE do something where augustine and serena are having a fight about their relationship and augustine ends up kissing her in the end??? angst that turns into fluff!? :D"
> 
> Important Note: I write for Serena when she's in her early 20's. The age gap between her and Augustine is ~10 years. 
> 
> Original prompt from my tumblr page: grandpaku.tumblr.com

She didn’t know the proper way to bring it up, so she was just going to ask him.

Serena had never doubted herself in any relationship until she met Augustine. At first, she thought she just had a silly infatuation for him; the intelligent, handsome professor who treated her like an equal as oppose to anything less. She would daydream about him in her office and then go home to an empty house hoping that he’d somehow show up there without being invited. Eventually, those thoughts consumed her so much that she needed to act on them. One day she got brave and started gently touching his hand at the coffee table, which lead to offering to stay long nights with him in his office to help him get work done. The infatuation evolved into a crush.

Then she started noticing things. The professor would make a lot of time for her. He offered to show her around Lumiose City and paid for her coffee at her favourite cafe down the block. He asked her to stay behind with him to help him feed the Pokemon and asked her to join him for lunch more often than not. His actions were making Serena believe that maybe there was a possibility for them after all.

And then there was the day he kissed her in his office, and that’s when everything changed.

They started dating right after that, not wanting to waste any time being apart from each other. They had their affair under the noes’ of everyone in the lab. They enjoyed sneaking around closed doors and sharing chaste kisses in the elevator. The thrill of being caught urged them on, as did their insistent need to be physically close with one another every waking minute of the day.

Serena was being overwhelmed with the affection Augustine bestowed on her. He always made the first move, always told her how much he needed her, and never let a private moment pass between them when he didn’t somehow show her his adoration. It was a powerful feeling for Serena to be with a man like that, so one day, she decided it was time to go public with their relationship.

And that’s when everything changed again.

Augustine insisted that they keep seeing each other in private because it was still early in their relationship (because apparently, 2 months is early.) Serena, blinded by devotion, did what he wanted until a month later when she brought it up again. That time Augustine said they would talk about it later and later never came.

That’s when Serena started to feel uneasy. Augustine wouldn’t fess up to why he wanted them to stay private so she had come up with answers of her own. But Serena was a smart girl who knew she couldn’t jump to conclusions, so she called Augustine down to his office so she could make him give her the right answer.

She was looking out at Lumiose City through the window when he softly knocked on the door behind her. He entered looking like his giddy, bubbly self, as he always did whenever she called him to one of the rooms in the laboratory.

“Serena,” he breathed, and before she could say anything he grabbed the sides of her face and pulled her in for a kiss. It was just like all his other kisses; soft, dominant, and filled with passion. Serena almost melted into it, but she couldn’t let her mind get cloudy with lust again. She broke away from the kiss and stepped back from Augustine.

“We need to talk.”

Something about his expression told Serena that he knew exactly what she was going to ask him but played it off dumb anyways. “Qu'est-ce que c'est?”

She took a big breath. “You know what I want to talk about. And this time we’re _actually_ going to talk about it.”

The tone of her voice was sharper than usual and Augustine noticed. He shuffled his feet to the door to close it. “You know how I feel, so I don’t understand why you keep bringing it up.”

“You know how _I_ feel, so I don’t understand why you keep pushing it away!” It wasn’t like Serena to raise her voice. She shocked herself by how firmly her words came out.

“Serena. Please understand where I’m coming from. I’m just not ready to tell everyone yet.”

“Why not?” She snapped. “You always say you don’t want to tell anyone but you never give a reason why. Before you used to say it was because we were dating for only a few months but we passed 4 last week and it’s eating me alive, Augustine. So tell me the truth.”

He could leave if he wanted to, Serena was aware of that. There was nothing stopping him from leaving the office and going on about his day as if this discussion never happened. Honestly, if he tried to leave, Serena wouldn’t stop him. It would just confirm the kind of man she never thought he would be.

She looked over her shoulder to see what he would do. He was shifting from foot to foot in one spot and scratching behind his neck, a trait, she noticed, he did whenever he was put on the spot. “There is no truth to it. I just don’t want people to know.”

“Is it because you’re seeing someone else?” She asked the most consuming thought in her mind. Immediately she regretted it because the look on Augustine’s face pained her more than thinking that it could be true.

“Serena, no.” His voice was laced with an airy sadness. “I would never do that to you. You’re all I want.”

She flops her forehead into the palm of her hand. “Well, it doesn’t feel that way anymore.” She turned around to completely face him and tried putting on a strong exterior. She straightened her shoulders but couldn’t look him in the eye just yet, so they settled on the floor. “It’s been four months of pure bliss for me. You’re all I ever wanted and more and by me not telling anyone about it … it makes it all seem fake. Like it’s not real. Like _you’re_ not real. And by you not wanting to tell anyone makes it worse, like I truly am just making this up in my head.”

“This is real. It’s not fake,” he quickly says after she’s done speaking. He walks up to her and attempts to take her hands but Serena pulls them away.

“Then what is it? What are we doing?”

“We are together.”

“Then why can’t other people know?”

He pauses. Serena sees the rise and fall of his chest as he carefully thinks his next words. He swallowed thickly and shook his head. “I… don’t know.”

She rolled her eyes. “You _do_ know and you’re just not telling me. I can’t do this relationship if I can’t trust you.”

“You can trust me, alright? You can trust me with everything in the entire world.” Augustine snapped. Serena shut her mouth immediately, surprised to see him so dynamic. “What we have is real and I’ve shown you that in every possible way I can, yet you’re still worried about other people knowing about us. Why? Why do you care if they know?”

“Because I want to share what we have to the world.” She says it like a statement. “I want everyone to know how happy we are. I don’t want to hide the way I feel about you.”

Augustine shook his head at her and chuckled. Serena furrowed her eyebrows at his feedback. “Why are you laughing? Do you think that’s a stupid reason?”

He quickly shook his head. “No, it’s not stupid. It’s just not the only thing you should be thinking about.”

Serena squeezed her fists together, absolutely fed up. “Then what else should I be thinking about, Augustine? _What?_ ”

He pauses again. Both of their chests are heaving and Augustine’s hair has become ruffled from him continuously running his hands through it. Serena doesn’t look any better. Her face is red with anger and her voice is threatening to move up in volume if he keeps saying riddles to her.

Augustine takes a deep breath, looking defeated. “What do you think is going to happen when people find out that an older man is dating a younger woman?”

And suddenly everything clicks together.

Out of all the situations she made up in her head, out of all the possible reasons why he didn’t want people to know about them, she never thought the age difference was one of them.

As soon as he said it Serena felt sick for thinking it was anything otherwise. In her defence, Augustine has never mentioned their age gap before. He clearly didn’t let that be a factor in deciding to date her or not, so why was it an issue now?

She looks at him with sympathetic eyes as she finally understands how he feels. “Augustine-”

He raises his hand to silence her. “People will think I’m using you. They’ll think I’m taking advantage of you because you’re younger and you work for me. They’ll think that I’m just using you for-” He stops himself, to disgusted to finish his sentence. “I’m scared of what other people will think - and don’t say it doesn’t matter because maybe to you it doesn’t, but to me it does.”

Serena perches herself on his desk as his words sink into her brain. “It’s okay that you’re older. Plenty of people date other people who are older than them. It’s not uncommon.” She tries to reason.

Again, Augustine shakes his head. “It’s not the same like with those other people. We’re not just _other people_. I could lose my credibility as a professor because of us.”

He slumps into the desk chair and puts his head in hands. Serena looks down at him with pity and wonders how such a confident man could become so unconfident in his actions. She didn’t realize how much stress she was causing him. She didn’t think about how their relationship could affect his credibility. Pokemon research was one of the most important things to him. It was his passion, hobby, and lifestyle. All because of her that could be taken away from him in an instant.

Serena shakes her head, refusing to believe anything that she was thinking. “No. That won’t happen. We can make it work.”

Augustine groans and looks exasperated when he looks up at her. “No. It _can’t_ work. I’ve run every possibility through my head, Serena.”

Serena shakes her head again. She jumps down from the desk to kneel in front of Augustine and takes his hands in hers, holding onto them tightly. “We can make it work, Augustine. I promise you. No one will think you’re using me for anything. We’ll just show them how much we care about each other and how much we actually want to be with the other person. If we do that, everyone will think that we are the real deal.”

She’s putting on her bravest, most heart-warming smile that she can for him and he can’t help but smile back in response. Serena was always his voice of reason, and what she purposes they do could possibly work out in their favour.

He stares at the tiny hands wrapped around his. Slowly, he moves them so his fingers slip between hers and he raises her hands up so he can kiss her skin. “Okay… I think we can make that work.”

Serena feels like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. “Really?”

Cautiously, he nods. Serena can feel his hands get clammy in hers. “Yes. I think it’ll be easy to show the world how much I love you.”

She freezes at his last words.

She lets go of his hands and leans back on her heels, eyeing him to make sure that what she heard was correct. The soft smile that spreads across Augustine’s face was confirmation enough, but she couldn’t be so sure. “What did you say?”

Augustine laughed through his teeth. He looked at her through his fringe and smiled the biggest, genuine smile Serena has ever seen. “I said I love you.”

Her mind took control of her after that. She jumped onto his lap and pressed her lips against his so fiercely that she thought they might fall over in the chair if they weren’t careful. Augustine wrapped his arms around her waist to keep her close and Serena had her hands on the sides of his face to direct the kiss.

When she pulled away, she said the words that have been playing on her lips for the past month. “I love you too.”


End file.
